Forklifts are often used to lift and transport stored articles around a warehouse or work site. Although the transporting of articles is intended only to be done while the article is held aloft on fork tines, often an article is towable, and the forklifts may conveniently perform a towing function to facilitate movement of the articles from place to place without lifting.
However, known towing devices for forklifts have disadvantages. Sometimes a tow ball is directly connected to a fork tine. This is a simple and cheap arrangement, but can tear the fork from its mount under certain loading conditions.
The tow ball may be mounted on a frame, in an arrangement known as a jib. Known jibs are mounted on the fork tines and sometimes a retainer, in the form of a chain, is looped around a fork tine mounting frame for increased towing capacity. Although this is an improvement on the direct tow ball mounting method, the fork tine mounting frame can be torn away from the forklift or otherwise damaged when towing an article.
A tow ball may be connected directly to the rear of a forklift. This arrangement results in the forklift operator facing in the opposite direction to the towed article which can cause safety issues when towing an article.
In this specification, where a document, act or item of knowledge is referred to or discussed, this reference or discussion is not an admission that the document, act or item of knowledge or any combination thereof was at the priority date:
(a) part of common general knowledge; or
(b) known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which this specification is concerned.
The present invention seeks to provide a useful alternative to known towing attachments for forklifts and seeks to provide a new towing attachment for a forklift.